The Shifting Tide (35 page)

They were ashen-faced, their hands trembling, but they did exactly as she told them. Mercy came while they were busy, and said in a low voice that Bessie’s nose was broken, but she had managed to stop the bleeding. Bessie would be all right, and so would Squeaky. He was bruised, but nothing was broken. Flo was doing what she could for the rest of the sick women, and what would Hester like her to do now?

“Put a pot of tea outside for the men in the yard,” Hester answered. “And thank them. Tell them we are grateful.” She did not look away from her work. “Put your finger there,” she instructed Claudine, indicating a raw vein from which blood was running. “Hold it. I’ll stitch it as fast as I can. I’ve got to do this one first.”

Without hesitation Claudine stretched out her finger and pressed.

Hester was oblivious of time. It could have been a quarter of an hour, or three quarters, when she finally realized she had done all she could. With Claudine’s help she bound the last bandage on Martha’s neck and shoulder and the top of her arm. She looked only once at the purplish patch near the armpit. She did not know if it was a bruise or the beginning of a bubo. She did not want to know. They washed her the best they could, put a clean gown on her, then called for Squeaky to help them carry her to one of the downstairs rooms. They laid her on the bed and covered her over.

Claudine looked at Hester questioningly, but she did not ask if Martha would live or not. “I’ll go and clean up the kitchen,” she said ruefully. “It looks like a butcher’s shop.”

“Thank you,” Hester answered with profound sincerity. She did not add any praise. Claudine knew she had earned approval, and that was all that mattered to her. She went out, even smiling very slightly at Squeaky as she passed him on her way to the door.

Hester took the bloodstained clothes down to the laundry, where she found Sutton looking exhausted. His lean face was shadowed as if with bruising, his eyes hollow, the stubble on his chin patched with white.

“Was the Crimea like that?” he said with a twisted smile. “Gawd ’elp the army if it were.”

She thought of it with an effort. It seemed like another world now. She had been younger, had so much less that was precious to her to live for. One did not allow oneself to think about the violence and the pain in a rational way, or it became too much to bear. Then instead of helping, one was another needing to be helped.

“Pretty much,” she replied, dropping the clothes on the floor. The real answer was too long, and she was too tired, and perhaps Sutton did not really want to hear it anyway.

“Iggerant an’ mad, in’t we?” he said with startling gentleness. “Makes you wonder why we bother wi’ ourselves, don’t it? ’Ceptin’ we in’t got nob’dy else, an’ yer gotter care ’bout summink.” He shook his head and turned to walk away. “Snoot!” he called when he was outside in the passage. “Where are yer, yer useless little article?”

There was an enthusiastic scampering of feet. Hester smiled as the little dog shot out of the shadows and caught up with his master.

After putting the clothes into cold water she went back to Martha’s room. There was not much she could do for Martha except sit with her, make sure the bandages did not work loose, give her water if she woke, bathe her brow with a cool cloth, and try to keep the fever down.

Five minutes later Claudine came to the door with a hot cup of tea and passed it to her. “It’s ready to drink,” she said simply.

It was. It was just cool enough not to scald. It was also so powerfully laced with brandy that Hester felt she should be careful not to breathe near the candle flame.

“Oh!” she said as the inner fire of it hit her stomach. “Thank you.”

“Thought you needed it,” Claudine replied, turning to go, then she stopped. “Want me to watch her for a bit? I’ll call you if anything happens, I swear.”

Hester’s head was pounding and she was so tired her eyes felt gritty. If she closed them for longer than a second she might drift off to sleep. The thought of letting go and allowing herself to be carried away into unconsciousness, without fighting, was the best thing she could imagine, better than laughter, good food, warmth, even love—just to stop struggling for a while. “I can’t.” She heard the words and wondered how she could make herself say them.

“I’ll get another chair to sit here,” Claudine replied. “Then if she needs you I can wake you just by speaking. I wouldn’t have to leave her.”

Hester accepted. She was asleep even before Claudine sat down.

She sat up with a gasp an hour later when Claudine woke her to say that Martha was very restless and seemed to be in a lot of pain. One of the wounds was bleeding again.

They did what they could to help her, working with surprising ease together, but it was little enough. Hester was grateful not to be alone, and she told Claudine so as they sat down again to watch and wait.

Claudine was embarrassed. She was not used to being thanked; to be praised twice in one night was overwhelming, and she did not know how to answer. She looked away, her face pink.

Hester wondered what the other woman’s marriage was like that she apparently lived in such bitter loneliness, uncomplimented, without laughter or sharing. Was it filled with quarrels, or silence, two people within one house, one name, one legal entity, who never touched each other at heart? How could she reach out to Claudine without making it worse, or ask anything without prying and perhaps exposing a wound which could be endured only because no one else saw it? She remembered Ruth Clark’s cruel words and the mockery and contempt in them, as if she really had known something about Claudine, not just guessed at it. Perhaps she had, and perhaps it was bitter and wounding enough that Claudine had seen the chance to kill her and protect herself. But Hester refused even to allow that into her mind. One day she might have to, but not now.

“Would you like Sutton to have another message sent to your home?” Hester asked aloud. “You could let them know you are all right, but that with so many ill we can’t do without you. That would be more or less the truth, or at any rate it’s not a lie.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Claudine replied, her eyes fixed steadily on Martha. “I said that in the first message.” She was silent for a moment or two. “My husband will be annoyed because it is a break in his routine, and he was not consulted,” she went on. “There may be social events he would like me to have attended, but otherwise it will not matter.” Her voice caught for a moment. “I don’t wish to appear to be explaining myself. For the first time in my life I am doing something that matters, and I don’t intend to stop.”

She had said little, and yet beneath the surface it was an explanation of everything. Hester heard the emptiness behind the words, a whole bruised and aching lifetime of it. But there was no answer to give, nothing to make it different or better. The only decent response was silence.

She drifted back into sleep again, and Claudine woke her a little before four. Martha was slipping into deeper unconsciousness. Claudine stared at Hester, the question in her eyes, the answer already known. Martha was dying.

“Is it the plague or the dogs?” Claudine asked in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Hester said honestly. “But if it is the dogs, perhaps that isn’t a bad thing. I—”

“I know,” Claudine interrupted. “Best thing not to linger.”

Martha was struggling for breath. Every few moments she stopped altogether, then gasped again. Hester and Claudine looked at each other, then at Martha. Finally it was the last time, and she lay still.

Claudine shivered. “Poor soul,” she said softly. “I hope there’s some kind of peace for her now. Do . . . I mean, should we . . .” She blinked rapidly. “Say something?”

“Yes, we should,” Hester answered without any doubt at all. “Will you say it with me?”

Claudine was startled.

“I don’t know what!”

“How about the Lord’s Prayer?”

Claudine nodded. Together they pronounced the familiar words slowly, a little huskily. Then Claudine folded the dead woman’s hands, and Hester went to fetch Sutton and ask for his help.

He was in the laundry, rewarding Snoot for having found a rat’s nest. He looked up as Hester came in. His face was grave, expectant. He saw her expression. “She go?” he asked. “Poor soul. ’Oo knows?”

“Just Claudine and I,” she replied.

“Good. We better get ’er out before light.” He straightened up. “Go ter bed, Snoot. Good boy. You stay there like yer told.” He turned back to Hester. “I’ll get the fellers ter take ’er. Sorry but we’ll ’ave ter wind ’er in a sheet. I know yer can’t afford ter lose no more, but there in’t no better way. ’Ceptin’ a blanket, mebbe, if yer got a dark one? Less easy seen.”

“I’ll find you a dark gray blanket,” she promised. “But what will they do with her? She can’t just be . . . I mean, she has to be buried too.” She thought of the silent, miserable business of taking Ruth Clark’s body out and leaving it on the cobbles in the rain for the men to take to an unknown grave. She had not asked where then; it was more than she wanted to know.

No doctor had seen Ruth, nor could they see Martha, not even an undertaker: he would see the throat and think she had been murdered. There was an irony in that she had not, not morally anyway. Ruth had, but there were hours at a time when Hester forgot that, and she had barely turned her mind to the question of who had done it, or why. Now it was poor, stupid, terrified Martha who mattered. That hysteria lay close under the surface in all of them. She licked her lips. They were so dry they hurt. “In hallowed ground?” she asked tentatively. “Is that impossible? I just can’t bear to think of her being pushed away somewhere in a drain or something.”

“Don’ worry,” Sutton said gently. “I got friends as can do all sorts o’ things. There’s graves in corners o’ proper places as got more bodies in ’em than they ’ave names on the stones. The dead don’ care if they share a bit. She won’t be left unblessed or unprayed for. Nor Ruth Clark neither.”

She felt the tears prickle in her eyes, and the sheer weight of exhaustion, loneliness, pity, and fear overwhelmed her. His kindness sharpened it almost beyond bearing. She wanted to thank him, but her throat was choked.

He nodded, his face hollow in the candlelight. “Go find the blanket,” he told her.

Claudine helped her roll the body and very quickly stitch the makeshift shroud around her, catching it in places so it would not fall undone if she were carried hastily, and perhaps with little skill. They did not speak, but every few moments their eyes met, and a kind of understanding made them move in unison, each reaching to help the other.

Squeaky came upstairs again. The three of them took her with stumbling steps, awkwardly, their backs aching, along the passage and to the back door, then outside into the yard. Hester raised her arm in signal to the men. In the faint light of street lamps twenty yards away they looked huge and untidy, coats flapping in the rising wind, bareheaded, hair plastered down. The rain made their skins shiny, almost masklike in the unnatural shadows. They acknowledged Hester and Claudine, but waited until they had gone back inside before they approached.

Sutton went out alone and spoke to the men.

The larger of the two nodded and beckoned his companion. Carefully they picked up the corpse, and without speaking they turned and walked slowly in the rain. They stood very upright with the weight balanced between them as if they were used to such a thing.

Hester and Claudine stood side by side at the doorway, so close their bodies touched, watching as the men passed under the street lamp. For a moment the rain was lit above them in bright streams. Then it glimmered pale on their backs as they retreated into the darkness. The van at the end of the street was little more than a greater denseness in the shadows.

No one spoke. It was quite unnecessary, and there was nothing to say. In a few hours another day would begin.

TWELVE

Rathbone had been to visit Gould in prison because he had promised Monk that he would. He had expected to find a man he was morally obliged to defend, not for the man’s sake, or because he was moved by any conviction that he was innocent, but because it was a clear duty. He realized as he left that he was inclined towards accepting Gould’s story that he really had found Hodge unconscious but not apparently injured. He admitted freely that he had stolen the ivory, but his indignation at the charge of murder had a ring of honesty that Rathbone had not expected.

However, on speaking to the undertaker who had buried Hodge, there could be no doubt whatever that he had suffered an appalling blow to the head. It had crushed the back of his skull, and was presumably the cause of his death. The undertaker had done as he was asked in burying Hodge, being assured both by Louvain and by Monk that all evidence had been recorded under oath and would be passed to the appropriate authorities. The perpetrator of the crime was being sought, and when found would be brought to justice.

Rathbone returned to his office and began to consider what possible courses were open to him. He was thus occupied when Coleridge informed him that Monk was at the door. It was a little after half past eight in the morning.

“Now?” he said incredulously.

Coleridge’s face was studiously without expression. “Yes sir. I daresay he is also concerned about the case.” He had no idea what the case was, and he was apparently offended by the omission. He also desired Rathbone to realize that Monk was not the only person working long and remarkable hours.

“Yes, of course,” Rathbone acknowledged. He had no intention of telling Coleridge what the case was; he could not afford to until it was absolutely necessary. Even then, it would be only what he was going to say in court, and not include the reason for any of his extraordinary silences. But Coleridge did deserve to be treated with consideration. “He would be,” he said, referring to Monk. “It is a grave matter. Will you show him in, please.”

“Would you like a cup of tea, Sir Oliver? Mr. Monk looks unusually . . .” The clerk searched for an adequate phrase. “In need of one,” he finished.

Rathbone smiled. “Yes, please. That is most thoughtful of you.”